Letters to Someone Else # 2

J.

I figure you’re not going to have a hell of a lot of time to read an email, so I’ll try to carve my thoughts into short paragraphs.

Your trip sounds strange and beautiful and makes me realize how far I’ve come from the thing I used to call life. I certainly have a life, and work myself as close to the bone as I can, but I don’t often feel a sense of ragged glory.

My recent international experience amounts to a slightly legalistic online negotiation with a French experimental jazz musician whose music I want to use in a film. Last night, listening to his music, I thought about you. It’s not surprising that I heard from you today. It’s possible, in fact, that when I was thinking about you you were typing to me. Time zones might create miraculous coincidences like that. It’s hard to figure.

The process of acquiring children and family and layers of fat is also the process of forgetting to dream about the self that you once thought you could be. I’m not sure if this is a good thing or a bad thing. That self was probably not worth much, but the dreaming . . .

H. can speak about nineteen words and is learning how to tell jokes. He also likes it when the puppets attack each other.

I last made art about a month ago. Since then, dribs and drabs. Tiny mouths are yawning.

This weekend is a thing called the Superbowl. People are pretty excited about it. I thought it was last Sunday, and I’ve been telling people that for the past week. It allows them to laugh at me and me to practice being humble and making jokes at my own expense. But also, it tells me that I’ve lost more than just the thread of my own, old self. I’ll split the difference.

I was driving in the rain today and I realized that I want to climb a mountain. I put out some feelers. Already I’ve been hearing back from mountains in need of climbers. I guess they’re pretty desperate. When transcendence happens along your spine, I imagine you feel its opposite, which also must be kind of amazing.

Take care, my friend. And write!

B.